


What's been unleashed

by MorteMistrata



Series: Kidge Alternate Universes [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Contest Winner Story, F/M, genie au, mythical creatures again wow, smut will be here, somewhere between too fuckin fast and medium burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-18 01:03:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13671033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorteMistrata/pseuds/MorteMistrata
Summary: Pidge is a treasure hunter, living under the radar in a Galra controlled world. Legends say that this specific treasure will be able to win the war. As it turns out, the 'treasure' is much more complicated than that.





	1. What's been opened

**Author's Note:**

> So this was written for Kokochan, who won a little challenge thing I'd had for the Kidge Royalty AU. They requested a really weird one, lol, and somehow, I made it into a multichapter fic. Let's see how this goes, shall we? As always, please read and review!

Pidge stares at the lamp with determination, and rubs it’s brass side with her sleeve, darkening the already dirty fabric to an emerald green. 

 

“I’ve been walking alone in this godforsaken desert for the past three weeks! If a Djinn doesn’t appear right this instant, I’ll- I’ll-,” She pauses as she tries to think of an appropriate threat. “I’ll knock this stupid pyramid down all by myself!”

 

“If you’re looking for riches,” A voice purrs behind her, danger lurking in the timbre of his words. She turns, but there is no one in the doorway. She stares back at the lamp, but it hasn’t changed. It’s still an ugly little, disappointing brass oil lamp. “Than you are in the wrong place.” The voice seems to come from the shadowy corners of the room now, where her torchlight does not reach. She picks it up, and tries to chase the shadows away. They resist, and slinker over to her shoulder. “You will find nothing but pain, and disappointment.” The voice says, the human aspect overwhelmed by a suddenly serpine hiss. She flinches, and turns again, dropping the lamp. Her hand reaches for the dagger strapped to her belt, but it’s not there. 

 

“Who are you?” She says, her voice only slightly trembling. 

 

The stone table that the lamp had sat on disappears beneath the darkness, and then reappears as the shadows recede. A boy sits there, fire flickering where his eyes should be, and he grins, twirling her knife between his fingers faster than she can catch. 

 

She nearly drops her torch.

 

He is pale-skinned, just as she is, and although that would normally mark him as a foreigner, the sun-kissed hue of his skin convinces her that this land is his own. His hair, black as night, frames his face in long strands, and his skin is covered in a fabric that seems too hazy and thin to cover him so completely.  Her eyes flit down to his smile, that faux-friendly, too sharp smile, and then back to his eyes. 

 

“I get three wishes, don’t I?” 

 

The Djinn blinks, as if surprised that she would address him so fearlessly, and then nods. “Yes. You get three. Use them well.”

 

Pidge thinks of the list tucked into her bag, scrawled with the handwriting of not just her own, but the wishes of her teammates. 

 

Shiro: To free those in the gladiatorial arena.

Hunk: No more starving. Endless food. Whatever works. Tired of eating dried meat. 

Allura: To bring back my people.

Lance: I want to go home.

 

Pidge knows the list by heart, knows exactly how they’d worded it, remembers every curve and line of their words. Each wish is equally humble and well meant. Some are more selfish than others, but she can’t fault them for that. Her own wish had been to get her family back. She feels the words at the back of her throat, just waiting to spill off of her tongue and into the empty, gaping air. She swallows. 

 

She knows the legends. She remembers every tale heard over crackling campfires, remembers every old woman’s warnings. The Djinn will twist her words until their meaning is so unrecognizable, she might not have made the wish at all. If she wishes for her family back, she may receive their corpses. She shudders at the thought.

 

“I have somewhere to be. I’ll figure out the specifics later.” She says, picking the lamp off of the floor, and setting it inside of her bag. She slings it across her shoulder, and pulls her hood over her face, all while holding her torch. “Will you be coming with me?”

 

“I owe you a debt; you have freed me from this prison. I cannot leave you until that debt is paid.” The Djinn explains. The fires in his eyes shimmer like the embers of a fire. “So I suppose I will.”

 

Pidge nods. “Well, off we go then.”

 

Leaving the pyramid is easier than entering it was, likely because she lets the Djinn take the lead. He lets his fingers trace the glyphs carved into their walls as they rise, and occasionally scowls at what they say. She is more fluent in the spoken word, than the written, but she pauses anyway to try and make it out. When she holds her torch up to it, the words seem to fold into themselves before she can read them. 

 

The Djinn waits for her at the end of the hall, his arms crossed. “You should not bother. It will only hurt your eyes to try.”

 

“Then what does it say? Why does it make you upset?”

 

“Upset?” The Djinn’s eyes flare. “What makes you think you can understand me so easily? How would you know how I feel?”

 

Pidge wonders if all Djinn are so rude and presumptuous. She rolls her eyes, and adjusts her shemagh around her hair. If there was one good thing about cutting her hair, it was that it made it much easier to travel through sandstorms. “You were frowning.”

 

The Djinn frown deepens. “To answer your question, they are cautionary tales. Slander, really.”

 

“Slander?”

 

The Djinn continues down the hall as if she hadn’t said a word. His legs are much longer than hers, and she almost has to run to catch up. 

 

“What did you mean by ‘Slander’?”

 

The Djinn leads them out into the night, the stars above glittering beautifully above them like the campfires set in the sky. For a moment, the two of them are mesmerized by them, and they stand together in silence. 

 

The Djinn breaks it first. 

 

“My name is Keith, of the fire and dying of the light. My mother was not of my father’s kind, and for that, I am bound by different rules. Whereas my father’s people can bring happiness, I am only able to bring pain. They write on my walls of my parents’ trysts, and of my uselessness.” 

 

Pidge’s heart drops in that moment. If he cannot provide them with the means of saving themselves, as they had all thought, then of what use was this journey? What use was the sacrifice of her hair, of Shiro’s injury in finding the map, of the money Allura had given them, and that she had spent? But then she catches the glow of his eyes, the way that their red and orange flames have disappeared, replaced by the dying smoke of a wet flame, and she realizes. Perhaps she didn’t find the answer to all of their problems, but she did find a possible new ally. Friend even, if she can shift out of that pitying mindset.

 

She places a hand on his arm comfortingly. “It’s alright. I’m fine with knowing you just as  _ you.  _ I am sure that ‘Keith’ is a much more interesting person than the ‘Djinn’ is.”

 

Keith seems surprised at touch, and even more so at her words. He offers her an uneasy smile, and the start of a new flame in his large, shining eyes.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. At the castle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha I've had this sitting in my wip's mostly written for like, a month, along with the sex scene, to be published on a later date. At least I finally posted it, yeah? As always, please read and review!

The travel home happens in a daze. She can only remember parts of it; certain scenes that stick with her, even as the rest drifts away like sand called to the wind.

 

Pidge remembers realizing in wonder that they’d covered three days’ distance in their first day, and yet their feet never grew weary. She’d only had to stop for food and water once. At some point, she’d realized that the desert seemed to shimmer around them, as if closing the distance between them and their destination without their input. 

 

_ “How’re we moving so fast?”  _

 

_ Keith’s eyes dimmed slightly, and the desert in front of them lost its mysterious shimmer. “We Djinn are borne of the desert; she does as we ask of her.” _

 

_ Pidge’s feet suddenly seemed heavy, and she could feel blisters starting to form on the soles of her feet. The sudden pains of hunger hit her all at once, and it was as if she has never known water, her throat was so dry. Keith blinked, and the fires in his eyes grew, and the desert bent to his will once more. She did not question him on it further. _

  
  


She remembers the moments just before they’d settled down for the night the best. 

 

_ “We’ll have to stop for camp soon.” She’d commented idly. Although it felt like the sun had only risen minutes ago, it was already starting to sink behind the horizon. “Do you ever tire? Do you need to sleep?” Pidge asks, suddenly aware of the fact that they are intrinsically different. If he hadn’t needed food or water, or protection from the sun, would he need to rest, or would he continue on like the seasons, oblivious to the effects they had on the humans who survived them. _

 

_ Keith snorted. “We all need to rest at some point. Perhaps I do not need as much as you, but it is an unavoidable need.” _

 

_ Over in the distance, she spotted the weathered shelter of what appeared to be a collapsed pyramid of some sort. Maybe it once held a Djinn just like Keith. Maybe it held nothing at all.  _

 

_ “We can camp there for the night. Should be safe enough.” She looked back to Keith for confirmation, but he was staring at something else, something out in the distance where the sun’s light still touched. His clothes were indistinguishable from one another; the shirt and pants bled into one another, and flew in the wind as easily as sand. Still, it somehow managed to reveal the planes of his body; the strong, solid lines of his chest; the curves of his biceps; the lithe form of his legs.  _

 

_ It is only when the light began to fade even more, casting them in deeper shadows than before, that she realized that she’s been staring. She hurried to look away, her cheeks burning with something other than sunburn.  _

 

Another night, she had changed her clothes, back turned to him. She was careful, gingerly removing her shirt, then her chest wrappings, and pants. She’d paused to massage her chest; while keeping them hidden was a necessity for a girl traveling alone, it made her chest hurt after an extended period of time, and she relished the few moments that she could bare them free. 

 

_ All too soon, she redressed, putting on new garments; a bright green shirt, given to her by her brother; brown pants, mended too many times to count, and of course, new chest wrappings beneath all of that.  _

 

_ When she turned back around, some comment or another on her lips, she found him looking in the opposite direction, eyes bright like there were burning the afterimage, lingering on his pupils. Hunk and Lance had seen her in various states of undress before. It was unavoidable; with her pretending to be a boy for most of their missions, they often had to share the same lodgings, and the same bathing rooms. Neither of them had reacted beyond politely looking away, and had continued conversation as normal.  _

 

_ Keith looked flustered, and it is in that reaction that she realized that he saw her not as a younger sister, or another comrade in arms, but as a woman. He was able to reconcile her femininity with her role as his friend, and it was in that moment that she realized that her attraction to him (because that was what you’d call it, right? With her staring at him so much, with the careful way that they treated each other, like disasters waiting to happen?) might not be as one sided as she’d first thought. _

 

There’d been another memory, a conversation half-lost to whatever winds had blessed their feet, allowing them to return in less than a third of the time that it should’ve taken. 

 

_ “How long were you trapped there?” _

 

_ “...” _

 

_ “You don’t have to tell me. I don’t mean to intrude. I was just being curious, I guess. I mean, I was a scholar before all of this and-” _

 

_ “Two hundred years, I believe. Zarkon had just begun to raise his armies. He had only just managed to claw his way to power.” _

 

_ She had to pause. Two hundred years was almost more than she could comprehend.  _

 

_ “Was it lonely?” _

 

_ “It’s in the past. All that matters is that I am not lonely now.” _

 

With these moments still lingering in her mind, the two of them reach the edge of Arus, Team Voltron’s current base of operations. Arus is a mostly deserted town now, except for the few people who wander in occasionally, and decide to stay. The castle sits at the center of it all; a massive, towering construction that looms over everything else in sight. The castle is a technological marvel. The lamps inside do not need oil to stay lit. There are healing pools that can bring people back from the brink of death, nary a scar. And most importantly of all: it can move. 

 

Keith pauses for a moment and sizes the thing up. “Haven’t seen anything like this for a long time. Thought Zarkon killed all of the Alteans years ago.”

 

Pidge shakes her head, and tugs him forward. His hand feels nice in the cool, desert air, and she is loathe to let it go, even when he starts to walk beside her, no longer needing her direction. “Almost all of them. He missed two: Princess Allura, Alfor’s daughter, and Coran, his advisor. They’re the ones who got our team together. Without them, we’d still be a ragtag team of refugees, lost in another world.”

 

“Hmm.” Keith says.

 

Pidge pulls her necklace out of her shirt, and unlocks the door. It swings open, revealing a long hall lined with lamps. As Keith steps inside and she closes the door, they begin to light up, creating a trail of warm light into the center of the castle.

 

“Anyways, welcome to our humble abode.” Pidge does an over exaggerated bow, and then tugs him behind her, feet moving faster and faster as they approach the inner sanctums, as if they’re trying to keep up with her wildly beating heart. Keith smiles at her antics, and that small upturn of his lips has her cheeks flushed red like a sunburn. Somehow, she doesn’t quite mind.

 


End file.
